Morning Jay

Over Labor Day weekend, three different theories of the 2012 presidential race were offered, all from Team Obama.

The first theory comes from David Axelrod, and we might call it, “Our outlook is so bright we gotta wear shades!”

In every presidential cycle, there is a debate about partisan identification in polling. Conservatives complain about too few Republicans being sampled; pollsters, journalists, and liberals respond by saying it is inappropriate to weigh polls by party identification.

What to make of all this?

What to make of Joe Biden’s apparent racial demagoguery this week in Danville, Virginia?

The conventional wisdom on the state of the 2012 presidential race is that, thanks to his endorsement of the House GOP Budget and his selection of Paul Ryan to be his running mate, Mitt Romney has opened himself up to one of the Democrats' favorite attacks -- fear-mongering over Medicare, or "Mediscare."

This consensus is wrong; instead, the Democrats are much more vulnerable on this issue in 2012.

The conventional wisdom in the presidential race is that President Obama is a clear favorite. We hear this from the pundits in the press, we see it in the InTrade odds, and various predictive models built around the polling averages tell us this.

But I disagree. 

A topic that inevitably receives a lot of focus during election season is the partisan spread of the major media polls. Conservatives regularly complain that the polls are tilted against their side, and thus favor the Democrats.

They have a point.

Most journalists will swear that, despite the fact they vote Democratic, they treat both sides fairly. Indeed, it is a rare event to read a news article that directly attacks the Republican party or one that praises the Democratic party.

But that does not mean media bias does not exist. It does – its exercise is just subtler than this. And the last two weeks have been a great example of how it operates.

Conservatives are increasingly frustrated by the vagueness of Mitt Romney’s campaign, which perhaps can be best summed up by his non-sequitur of a slogan, “Believe In America.” Romney has to put down some detailed policy proposals to win, the argument goes.

When you see a new poll, what do you look at first? With the general election campaign nominally underway, most people would say that they look at the head-to-head matchup between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

But I’m still intensely focused on the president’s job approval numbers.

Give the media enough time, and they will spin straw into gold – for Democrats, naturally. And so it has been over the last two weeks since the Obamacare ruling was handed down.

The Hill reports:

Obama touted the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold his signature healthcare reform legislation to cheers from a crowd of his supporters.

“The law I passed is here to stay,” he told an audience composed largely of Ohio automobile manufacturing workers.

Many conservatives are feeling betrayed by the chief justice's vote to uphold Obamacare. But there's a counterintuitive case to be made that John Roberts's decision is largely a victory for conservatives.